by Stuart, Anne
“Your department isn’t looking any too good with this investigation, Adamson,” Damien said.
“Do you think I give a rat’s ass about that? First and foremost, I want to stop this creep. I’ll worry about job security later.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, obviously harassed. “You two staying here?”
“No,” Damien said, before Lizzie could answer.
“Don’t leave the state,”. A damson said. “As a matter of fact, go back to LA and don’t even leave the city limits. We can’t protect you if you do, and if you disappear, so will our only lead.”
“She’s not going to be a sitting duck for a madman,” Damien said sharply.
“Are you sure you mean that? You want to catch this guy just as much as we do. Think of your book sales, Damien. That’s why you’re hanging around her, isn’t it? You didn’t have any qualms about printing her name in the papers. You aren’t worried about saving her life, you just want to be in at the kill.”
Damien lunged for him. It happened so fast that Lizzie was still sitting there, watching in astonishment, as Damien’s fist slammed into Adamson’s jaw, throwing him back against the open door. And then she was off the bed, grabbing hold of Damien, pulling him away.
He went willingly enough; otherwise Lizzie’s strength would have been no match for him. Adamson was rubbing his jaw, and his eyes were dark with dislike. “I could have you thrown in jail for that,” he said.
“And my publishers would get me out just as quickly,” Damien taunted in a rough voice. “Besides, you need me to do your job for you. You can’t keep Lizzie safe. I can.”
“Can you?”
“I can do a hell of a lot better job than you can,” he snapped.
“Don’t think you can leave the area either,” Adamson said. “If you do, my men will find you and drag you back.”
“At least she’d get some police protection.”
“Stop talking about me as if I’m not here,” Lizzie said sharply. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need Damien or the police watching out for me.”
The two men looked at her in disbelief, plainly united for once. Then Damien turned back to Adamson as if she hadn’t spoken. “We’ll stay put. Not as long as I think she’s got as good a chance in LA as anywhere. At least there I can watch out for her.”
“Don’t you think that’s the department’s job?” Adamson demanded. “What makes you think you can do any better than we can?”
“The police haven’t inspired me with much confidence lately,” Damien drawled. “I prefer to rely on myself.”
“I think we can do as good a job as anyone. This guy can’t be real, Damien.” Adamson’s voice was shaken, unguarded. “He’s murdered women, cut them apart with supernatural speed, and no one has seen or heard a thing. He’s not human. He has powers—”
“Stop it!” Lizzie said, her voice hoarse with strain. Damien was watching her, his eyes dark and haunted, but he said nothing.
“You’re right,” Adamson said, shaking his head. “I’m letting it get to me. We’ll catch him, Ms. Stride. We’ll get the bastard, if it’s the last thing I do.” He headed for the door, but Damien’s cool, cynical voice stopped him.
“I take it you aren’t going to press charges? Assaulting an officer and all that?”
Adamson managed a faint grin. “I guess this time I might have had it coming. Just don’t let it happen again, Damien. I might not be in such a cheery mood.” He slammed the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone once more.
Damien wouldn’t meet her gaze. He went back to the television, switching it back on in time to see Adamson himself on tape. “We’re looking into all possibilities, but at this point we tend to think this is a case of a copycat killer. The Venice Ripper has never been known to stray away from Venice, and there is no reason to assume he’d pick San Bernardino.”
“Damn him,” Damien muttered, throwing himself back into his chair.
“He doesn’t really believe that, does he?”
“Of course not. He’s just feeding the public more lies.” Damien ran a hand through his long, thick hair and shut his eyes. “He’s right about one thing, though. The Ripper will find you if he wants to. There’s no safe place to hide.”
Lizzie shivered. “What do you suggest I do? Stake myself out on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and wait for him to come and cut my throat?”
“He does more than that,” Damien said.
She fought back her sudden horror. “Stop it.” She straightened, suddenly knowing what she needed. “I want to go home.”
“Where? Back to Michigan?”
She didn’t even bother to ask how he knew where she came from. Damien seemed to know everything. “To my apartment.”
“Why? He knows where you live.”
“He probably knows where you live, as well,” she pointed out. “He seems to know everything.”
“Don’t listen to Adamson. We’re not dealing with a supernatural force here. He’s a killer, plain and simple. A human being, twisted, but very real.”
“I want to go back to my apartment,” she said stubbornly. “And then I want to go out shopping. You can come with me if you want, or you can go back to your own squalor.”
“Oh, I think I’m willing to try your squalor for a change,” he drawled. “Why the hell do you want to go shopping? What is it you have a sudden need for?”
“My masks,” she said flatly.
HE’D ALMOST HAD her. He’d reached out his hands for her, ready to pull her back into the alleyway, and then he’d known he couldn’t. Whatever she’d been doing in that motel room, it hadn’t been what he’d thought. She hadn’t been touched, hadn’t been doing filthy things with the reporter. He’d known it with a miserable certainty, and he’d known the time hadn’t come to kill her. He would have to be patient.
The rules were very simple, and very strict. He had to punish them, punish them all, ending with Long Liz Stride. But they had to carry a man’s mark on their body, proof of their wicked ways. They had to die, fresh from the act of fornication, as penance for leading men away from their God-given duty. They had to die in a state of sin. If they didn’t, all his plans would be for nothing.
Why hadn’t she been with Damien? He’d seen them together, watched them from a distance. He could see the power between them, that sick, wicked desire that was eating them up. Why hadn’t they given in to it?
He wouldn’t accept the possibility that she knew better. She was for him. It was for her that he’d come back, to finish what he’d started. She wouldn’t cheat him again.
No one looked at him as he walked down the street, shuffling, stinking of months of accumulated filth. Of all the people he became, he liked the street people the best. No one ever looked them in the eye, no one came close to them. Except for that one softhearted whore, who’d given him a five-dollar bill as he’d shuffled by, two weeks ago. He still had her kidney in his refrigerator.
His hands were trembling. He couldn’t wait much longer for Long Liz Stride. His time, his destiny, was running out. The red sky would turn to blue, the rain would stop, and the Venice Ripper would be no more, returned to his safe life. Three more days. He felt it in his aching bones.
He had to hurry.
HE WAS A DEVIOUS bastard, God new, Damien thought. It had been child’s play to get her to say the night in the run-down hotel. He’d simply disappeared into the bathroom for as long as he could manage, and by the time he emerged she was sacked out on the bed, deep in sleep. He stared down at her for a long moment.
She’d kissed him when he’d been sleeping—he was sure of it. He would have been tempted to return the favor if he thought there was any chance of controlling himself. but he knew that was a lost cause. He moved over and picked up the discarded chenille bedspread, and faint smile
on his mouth. She was a nurturer, he thought, just the kind of woman he hated. He covered her with the spread very careful so as not to wake her up, but she was out like a light. He wondered how long it had been since she’d had a good night’s sleep? Not as long as he’d gone—most people couldn’t take that kind of punishment but his years as a war correspondent got conditioned him to going without food or sleep for days and days.
Why the hell she felt safe enough with him was another question. He’d outright told her he could be the ripper, he’d been a bastard to her, and yet she curled up on the bed, completely trusting.
He dropped back down in the rickety chair, propping his legs on the end of the bed, but she didn’t stir. They’d stay as long as she slept. Their next stopover was going to come with a lot of uncomfortable questions, because he wasn’t leaving her alone. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want him living at her apartment—he was sticking to her like glue. He leaned back, resting his head against the tacking pine paneling, and closed his gritty eyes.
God, why had he kissed her? If the police sirens hadn’t stopped him he would have taken her in the alleyway, ripped off her clothes and had her, there and then, up against the wall with the rain pouring down around them, and she would have taken him. He’d forgotten when he’d last had sex—it was one of those primal bodily urges that he’d been ignoring, like the need for food and sleep. He’d had to give in to the other two when deprivation overwhelmed him.
Maybe it was as simple as that. Too long without a woman, and you were all over the first one who held still long enough for you to nail her.
Except he knew that wasn’t true. There were any number of women who would hold still for him, always had been, always would be. He was considered an attractive man, and his cool remoteness had the paradoxical effect of making women want him even more. He was used to being able to pick and choose, if he wanted to, but recently he just hadn’t wanted to.
Until Lizzie Stride had come storming into his apartment, chest heaving, green eyes glaring, thick red hair coming undone down her back. Suddenly there was something more in his bleak life than his obsession with the Ripper, something he didn’t want to make room for. Something that barged right in and took up residence in what passed for his conscience, his soul. His heart.
He knew her, drawn to her through the dark, swirling tunnel of an endless past. He knew her mouth, the taste and feel of it achingly familiar. But he didn’t know her body. Never had he lost himself in the sweet, warm strength of her arms. Never had he listened to her cry out in pleasure as she clutched him tightly, writhing, sweating, hot and dizzy.
He forced his thoughts away from that mesmerizing fantasy. One thing was undeniable. She was the only person in months who’d made him smile, the only person who’d gotten past his obsession, past the defenses and the wall of determination he’d built around himself. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like her. Didn’t like her soft mouth and her rich red hair, didn’t like her breasts and her hips and her waist. The scent of her, the feel and taste of her, the wry, unexpected humor of her. And most of all he didn’t like her eyes, and the lost lives he could see reflected in their rich, green depths.
She was a complication so powerful he wasn’t sure he could handle it, but the alternative was impossible as well. He couldn’t abandon her to her own devices. If he did, he would be abandoning her to the Ripper, and he bore his own culpability for writing that article. He had to save her, even when he knew he was a far cry from a hero.
There was always the remote possibility that the current Ripper knew nothing about his bloody predecessor, and that Lizzie’s name was just an eerie coincidence. That his choice of her masks was random.
And you might as well throw in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy while you’re at it, he thought bitterly. The Venice Ripper knew exactly what he was doing. And no one knew enough to stop him.
Lizzie Stride slept the night through, with Damien watching over her. The power nap he’d had should hold him for a few days, and he wasn’t about to nod out when he was watching over her. She didn’t stir until it was past seven in the morning, and if she had any opinions about him letting her sleep the night through she kept it to herself.
They were on the road in fifteen minutes, stopping long enough for coffee before heading into LA. The drive took a little over three hours given the usual insane traffic, and she sat beside him without saying a word, staring out into the bright sunlight.
The search for Lizzie’s masks was a revelation. She tended not to sell her work through upscale galleries, and they were far more modestly priced than they deserved to be. He wondered how she could survive in the high-priced atmosphere of southern California. Not that it was any of his concern, but it explained why she didn’t even have enough money for gas to get her out of town.
The masks tended to be displayed in small hole-in-the-wall craft shops, places that reeked of incense and oil and people who lived on garlic. They were jumbled in among the New Age books, the overpriced crystals, the bottles of scented oil and the arcane instruments that surely had their uses, though he couldn’t imagine what. The first two stores they tried had sold their masks weeks ago, and each one had had a different purchaser. It wasn’t until they stopped outside a particularly dark and dank little shop near the freeway that she turned to him. “I’m going to need some money,” she said stiffly, the first time she’d willingly spoken to him.
It amused him. He wasn’t sure what bug was up her ass, though he had a pretty good idea it was those moments in the rain when he’d practically stripped her clothes off. He didn’t mind the silence—it enabled him to think. “I’ve already offered you . . .” he began.
“I’m sure Hickory still has one of my masks, and he’s already paid me for it. I needed an advance, and he was kind enough to give it to me. He’s a saint, and he’d give me the mask back without money if I asked for it, but I’m not. I’m going to pay him.”
“How much?” Damien reached into his wallet without protest.
“It was an expensive one. Hickory insisted on paying me more than it was worth, and I wasn’t in a position to argue.”
“How much?”
“A hundred dollars.”
He didn’t even blink. He peeled off some rumpled twenties and handed them to her, then opened the car door.
“You don’t need to come in,” she said hurriedly.
“I’m coming.” He slammed the car door behind him, looking around at the busy sidewalks. It was getting afternoon by this time, and the hookers were beginning to appear on street corners. They’d taken to traveling in pairs since the Ripper murders, but even that hadn’t proven much protection. Most customers weren’t willing to pay for two, and only a few of them enjoyed an audience.
Hickory’s Mystic Wonders was three doors down from a strip joint, and across the street from a burger place. Venice never failed to amaze him, Damien thought.
“I don’t want you to insult him,” Lizzie said hurriedly, running to keep up with him. “Hickory has amazing . . . gifts, and he has no qualms about using them. I don’t want you to hurt his feelings.”
He glanced down at her with hooded eyes. “I promise I’ll behave myself. As long as he doesn’t insist on telling my fortune.”
Lizzie made a face. “He might,” she admitted, and preceded him into the shop.
“I knew you were coming, Little Flame,” an elderly voice said, drifting from the back of the store on a wave of incense.
“Little Flame?” Damien muttered under his breath.
“Shut up, Damien,” she hissed. She plastered a beatific smile on her face as an old man hobbled toward them. “Hickory,” she said, flinging her arms around his bent figure, and for a moment Damien felt an irrational flash of jealousy. Not for the man, per se, but for Lizzie’s wholehearted affection, freely given.
Not that he wante
d it, he warned himself. He’d done everything he could to keep her at arm’s length. Well, almost everything, he amended, up until the time he’d been fool enough to kiss her. But just once he would like someone to look at him with such innocent, compelling affection.
No, that was a lie. He didn’t want someone. He wanted Lizzie to look at him like that.
“Hickory, I need to buy my mask back from you,” she said in an urgent voice. “I’ve got the money.”
Hickory looked like an elderly gnome, gray hair down to his shoulders and completely bald on top, and he was wearing some sort of cross between a wizard’s robe and a caftan. “Much as it distresses me, dear one, I no longer have it. A man came in to buy it just this morning. I didn’t wish to sell it to him, so I named an impossible price, but he bought it anyway. I owe you the balance.”
Lizzie’s shoulders sank in defeat. “That’s all right, Hickory. You bought it from me. You’re entitled to make a profit—after all, it’s your business.”
“But not a profit such as this.” He shambled over to the littered counter and reached under to pull out a faded cloth sack. From it he withdrew five hundred-dollar bills and handed them to a shocked Lizzie.
“Not the safest way to keep your money, old man,” Damien said in a caustic voice.
Those ageless, milky blue eyes focused on him for a moment. “You brought him here,” he said in a wondering voice. “You found him, after all this time. You must care about him.”
“Not particularly,” Lizzie said, in a dry voice. “And I only just met him.”
“This time around,” he said obscurely. “You can’t fool me, Little Flame,” Hickory murmured, touching Lizzie’s hair with a gentle gesture, and Damien found himself wanting to knock the old man’s hand away. “This man means a great deal to you.” He came closer, and Damien held his ground, staring down at him with all his ironclad defenses in place. “Who is he?”
